Yesterday, Matt Yglesias noted he was taken to task by Red State and other Right blogs for being a pointy-headed Harvard grad pontificating about things military. So it was great irony today to see, as reported by The Angry Rakkasan, General John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, being lectured to by pointy-head AEI scholar Frederick Kagan on things military. Rakkasan links to the Chicago Trib blog which reported:

Major Gen. John Batiste (ret.) who commanded the Army's First Infantry Division in Iraq, and is a respected critic of the war, said the insurgents have the initiative since they can pick where and when to explode a truck bomb for instance. But Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, rejected that view, saying that under the new strategy being executed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, the initiative was on the U.S. military's side. . . . It was one of those strange Washington moments where the military expert with real experience as a combatant commander in the battlespace at issue was being told he was wrong by an Inside-the-Beltway expert who likely never fired a weapon at anyone in anger.

I expect outraged posts throughout the Right blogs to protest this lack of respect for military experience. No I don't.

Paul Charleton, the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona who was fired by Attorney General Gonzales, testified before Congress yesterday and said Gonzales was "overzealous" in his determination to seek the death penalty, often against the advice of prosecutors in charge of the case.

The Bush administration has so far overruled prosecutors' recommendations against its use more frequently than the Clinton administration did.

The pace of overrulings picked up under Gonzales's predecessor, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, and spiked in 2005 and 2006, when the number of times Gonzales ordered prosecutors to seek the death penalty against their advice jumped from three to 21.

One example is the case of meth dealer Jose Rios Rico. Charleton describes Gonzales' unwillingness to listen to his arguments against seeking the death penalty based on the lack of forensic evidence showing Rico was the murderer:

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Paris Hilton was on Larry King Live for the entire hour tonight describing her three weeks in jail. She exhibited both grace and humility. She seemed genuine to me. There was no self-pity.

She's clearly struggling to find herself and seems determined to have something positive come out of the experience.

I doubt it's easy for anyone to go in front of millions of people and describe her fears and psychological disabilities or to describe something as humilitating as being strip-searched.

Interesting: Paris denies ever taking illegal drugs. She says she doesn't have a drinking problem. She has ADD and takes Adderall. Her parents don't support her financially, she describes herself as a businesswoman with her own successful businesses.

I'm sure there will be a million comments on the internet in the wake of tonight's interview tearing her down. I give Paris a lot of credit.

For more than a decade, Guy and Genevieve Vang waited for the immigration bureaucracy to respond to their application for political asylum. They had two children, U.S. citizens by birth, before the government decided, in late 2000, to begin removal proceedings.

They and their [first] two children came to the United States from France, the country they fled to after they escaped war in Laos and Vietnam. They got working papers, filed for political asylum and waited.

They eventually opened up a restaurant, Bangkok 96, in Dearborn, Mich., and had two more children. But they continued to wait on word from the government about their asylum application.

If the government didn't believe the Vangs were worthy of American residence, it should have rejected their application promptly. Instead, the Vangs were trapped in a paperwork maze. Their green cards were renewed annually but their asylum application languished. Shouldn't the government be obliged to act promptly if it seeks to remove people who are working legally, paying taxes, raising a family, and obeying the law?

The Vangs' only hope is legislative relief. They're scheduled to be deported in less than 60 days. Sign a petition.

It's about time.

The Senate Judiciary Committee today issued subpoenas to the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Justice Department after what the panel’s chairman called "stonewalling of the worst kind" of efforts to investigate the National Security Agency’s policy of wiretapping without warrants. ...

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the committee, said the subpoenas seek documents that could shed light on the legal basis used by the administration to justify the wiretapping, as well as on disputes within the government over its legality.

In addition, the panel is seeking materials on issues related to the wiretapping , including those concerning the relationship between the Bush administration and several unidentified telecommunications companies that aided the N.S.A. eavesdropping program.

The White House, via a deputy press secretary, promised to "respond appropriately." Meaning: stonewall until the last day of the Bush presidency, build a big bonfire, and blame the document loss on a terrorist attack.

Erica Hejnar and another woman were arrested for "suspicion of drug possession." That's strike one against the Philadelphia Police Department, because neither woman had any drugs.

Hejnar and her friend were eventually released without charges, but not before Officer Norberto Cappas ordered them "to kiss and touch each other and expose their breasts."

Hejnar and her friend told Internal Affairs that Cappas dangled the keys and taunted them as he escalated his sexual demands, telling them they would do as he asked if they wanted to go home that night.

That's strike two. Strike three: Henjar collected $17,500 from the city, "in part because city lawyers concluded that she never should have been detained in the first place." No kidding. It's difficult to imagine that there was probable cause to arrest two women for drug possession who weren't in possession of drugs.

Strike two was enough to get Cappas fired, at least for now. A police tribunal found him guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and of lying during a departmental investigation. The police commissioner canned him, effective at the conclusion of a 30 day suspension. But Cappas may still convince an arbitrator to overturn the commissioner's decision.

Digby and many others have written about this TNR article about the National Review cruise. I was struck by this excerpt:

D'Souza summarizes the prevailing sentiment by unveiling what he modestly calls "D'Souza's law of immigration": An immigrant's quality is "proportional to the distance traveled to get to the United States." In other words: Asians trump Latinos.

Being an Indian immigrant, who justified bin Laden and Al Qaida by saying:

Muslims must rise up in defensive jihad against America because their religion and their values are under attack. This aspect of Bin Laden’s critique has been totally ignored, and it’s one that resonates with a lot of traditional Muslims and traditionally people around the world . . .

I think maybe D'Souza might want to be more careful about that. As Jane Galt has pointed out, no Mexicans have perpetrated terrorism in the United States. It was folks from far away, some from near where D'Souza's people came from.

Jon Chait:

Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani traveled to Regent University to kiss the ring of Pat Robertson. For those who don't recall, Robertson is not just a strong social conservative, he's a raving loon. . . . When conservatives are forced to address the subject of Robertson, they usually insist that he's a marginal figure. That's basically what liberals say when forced to discuss the likes of Louis Farrakhan, who is a very close parallel to Robertson. But you don't see Democratic presidential candidates seeking out Farrakhan's warm public embrace. So why isn't the Giuliani-Robertson story getting much national attention?

Andrew Sullivan writes:

Instead of conflating all the moral issues, [Americans between 18 and 29] have no problem with gay dignity and equality, but retain many of the moral conflicts of their parents with respect to the far more troubling issue of abortion.

What did the poll Sullivan cites for this argument actually say?

A Georgia judge has denied bond for Genarlow Wilson, opining that the state statute does not allow for appeal bonds on the crime of which he was convicted.

His lawyer disagrees, saying Genarlow's case is a habeas case and the Judge looked at the wrong statute.

On June 11, as TChris wrote, Genarlow was ordered released from his 10 year sentence for having consensual oral sex with a girl who was only two years younger.

While serving his sentence, Genarlow filed a Habeas Petition, arguing the sentence violated the 8th Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment. It was granted. It is the state that is now seeking appellate review of the habeas decision. So which statute should apply, the habeas or the appeal bond?

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Newsweek examines teen drinking this week. Experts say pot is better for them than alcohol:

Even if they don't become alcoholics, teens who drink too much may suffer impaired memory and other learning problems, says Aaron White of Duke University Medical Center, who studies adolescent alcohol use. He says parents should think twice about offering alcohol to teens because their brains are still developing and are more susceptible to damage than adult brains.

"If you're going to do that, I suggest you teach them to roll joints, too," he says, "because the science is clear that alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana."

The DEA of course sends a contrary message. Just last week, Mark R. Trouville, chief of the DEA's Miami office, announced at an indoor marijuana grow bust:

"This ain't your grandfather's or your father's marijuana," Trouville said. "This will hurt you. This will addict you. This will kill you."

When many progressives railed and rallied for a primary challenge to Senator Joe Lieberman, the contempt and disdain heaped on them (I was one) from the Media and the Right was piled high. It will be interesting to see how the Media covers the growing GOP Primary Fever, which started with urging John Bruning to challenge Chuck Hagel in Nebraska:

An Instapundit reader later urges primary challenges for compromise supporters, Kausfiles seconds the idea. Riehl World View is just done with the whole party.

Mickey Kaus, whose political affiliation seems to be Republican but it is not always easy to tell if he is just an independent, writes:

the prospect of political defeat is the thing politicians most understand. (The money helps them avoid the defeat.) That means the most effective thing that could be done to pressure pro-comprehensive Senators is to start organizing actual campaigns against them--primary challenges, but also general election challenges to Republicans from anti-comprehensive Dems, and vice-versa. It's easy to organize on the Web, and by organizing now you might get your Senator to change his or her vote. Once the vote is cast it's too late. ...

The vituperative Mickey Kaus! Who'da thunk it? But all kidding aside, I applaud these attempts to organize "people power." I think political parties should be where ideas are debated, and primaries are the right vehicle. I think every candidate should be primaried, even the ones I like.